In grad school, Losman and his fiction cohort once threw a “sex scene party,” the kind of shindig only a bunch of haughty creative writer types would even think of, let alone throw. People were asked to bring a book with their “favorite” worst sex scene. They’d read the passages aloud, and they’d each get a score. Like gymnastics, the ideal score was a perfect 10, only in reverse; you were rated on how terrible the passage was, so the worst passages netted the highest scores. Whoever had the most points at the end of the evening was declared the winner. Losman couldn’t recall who’d won, or even which author had written the worst scene, but he’d placed second with his selection, a sample from a collection he no longer remembered but which had made sex seem as thrilling as a televised chess match. After that evening, everyone at the party solemnly declared they would rather die than write a sex scene.
Which was why Losman paused now in his work. He’d reached a scene in which the protagonist, Niels P., had trailed one of his suspects, Katrine Bredesen—a femme fatale with a mysterious past (because don’t all femme fatales have a mysterious past?)—to a swank restaurant in central Copenhagen. There they sat drinking cocktails at the bar. Niels P. asked a series of probing questions (“Where were you on the night of…?” “When was the last time you…?”) that before long took on a tinge of sexual innuendo. Soon, in a weird and highly implausible twist, Niels P. escorted the femme fatale to the men’s room, where they proceeded to have hard, kinky sex in one of the toilet stalls as Niels P. continued to ask probing questions of his suspect.
Losman banged his head on his desk. What was he going to do with this trash? It was the silliest sex scene he’d ever read—on a scale of 1-10 it would score a 20—and yet his name would be attached to it forever. Without a doubt, once the judges for The Literary Review’s Bad Sex Award read this passage, they would burst into tears of laughter and shoot it up to the top of the list. He’d be a laughingstock; or, worse, readers would think it was so bad that he, the translator, must’ve really messed something up. The phrase “lost in translation” never failed to irk Losman, and in this instance it would be particularly galling. Though it was only his first pass through the novel, and it wasn’t time to worry about syntax, grammar, awkward phrases, or mixed metaphors, there was only so much he could do with this shit. Losman hadn’t replied to Niels H.’s email—his strategy was to ignore him until he went away—and got lucky when Niels H. followed up with another email, explaining that he was heading to Corsica to finish his next book but that he absolutely wanted to see some pages when he returned.
It was a small reprieve. But according to Losman’s schedule, he still had sixteen days to finish the first draft.
This one little scene was a microcosm of everything that was wrong with this terrible book, and Losman could imagine what his UK editor—a staunch feminist with a bell hooks quote tattooed on her forearm—would say to this rot. And what about critics and readers in the English-speaking world? That particular battering ram would topple Petersen’s fragile ego, a castle apparently made of papier-mâché. A whole team of sycophants at Ariadne had led him to believe in his own greatness, and in doing so had failed him. Why had they not told him that this scene was thoroughly, one hundred percent ridiculous? That Niels P. could not have sex with a suspect just because she was hot?
How was Losman going to fix it? How could he? For better or worse, he was stuck with it. He imagined that Petersen had concocted this scene with an overheated film version by Lars von Trier in mind. Surely, he would object to any changes.
Losman went to the kitchen and poured himself another cup of coffee. Upstairs, some kind of saw churned to life, and he thought, oh great, just what I need. He glanced at the clock and jerked his head a few times, puffing air over his upper lip. It was only 9:30. Below on Nordre Frihavnsgade, he searched for any distraction that could keep him occupied, away from the hideousness that awaited him once he returned to his desk. He watched an elderly man walking his golden retriever. The dog was clearly a puppy; it strained at its leash, forcing the man to stumble dangerously forward, as if blown by a strong wind. A bicyclist rode past on the opposite side of the street, heading in the wrong direction, her blond hair bobbing on her shoulders. He noted the red van parked at the curb: Jakobsen og Sønner, Tømrer.
His mind strayed back to BhMe4. Over the past three weeks, Pelin and Jens had picked up Losman in Pelin’s little blue Citroën and driven him to FuturePerfect Labs, stuck him with pads and wires, and given him the yellow pill. Each week, more and more of Losman’s babyhood life emerged. His recalled memories included his first birthday party, a beautiful day for his babyself. But as his babyself squealed through the unwrapping of his presents, adult Losman observed Uncle Glen getting drunk and flirting with a waifish, dark-haired woman that definitely wasn’t Aunt Bernadette. The memory caused Losman to reevaluate his favorite uncle; now, his mother’s oft-snide remarks about Glen (which he recalled even without the use of BhMe4) suddenly made sense. The man was a philanderer, a fucking asshat. Another memory, which must’ve been stored in his brain shortly before his first birthday party, was the moment baby Losman learned how to walk. He watched his babyself reach out and clutch a cushion on the couch. Hand over hand he moved from one end of that couch to the other, while repeatedly glancing up at his mother, delighting in the giddy clucks she made. His father stood off to the side filming, creepily silent; adult Losman recognized this scene from the home movies he had viewed years later. This had been a very happy memory. Even adult Losman cheered his babyself on.
But the memories weren’t all rosy. Adult Losman saw a pattern emerge; his memories fell into one of four categories: fear, anxiety, happiness, and confusion. Not surprisingly, the memories he liked least involved fear. Like the one in which he lay alone in his bed clutching Solly. In this one he was a toddler, and no longer sleeping in a crib. His bedroom was dark but for a nightlight, and the shadows formed by that light stared at him, a forest of creepy eyes. Toddler Losman whimpered at the darkness, watching the shadows shift and glide like ghouls. The toddler’s fear caused even adult Losman, who of course was traveling with him, to be afraid. Why was the toddler afraid, though? Why would a child fear darkness if he knew of nothing but light?
And there was the one in which his mother screamed at the sight of an enormous, hairy spider crawling up her pant leg. In this memory, Losman was around three years old, and adult Losman could actually feel his child self shrivel up in deep-bone fright once his mom leaped from her seat and frantically swatted at the spider in a state of accelerated panic. Was this the reason he hated—and kind of feared—spiders?
In this formative memory Losman had been Aksel’s age. Relived moments like this were exactly what Aksel lived every single minute of every single day. What fears and anxieties were he and Kat inadvertently passing on to him?
Following each session, Losman woke up with an erection, though less intense than the first time, as if his body was adjusting to the pill’s effects. Ever since that first session, Losman had felt a strange disconnect between his sleeping and waking selves—a growing sense of unreality. As if real life happened only when he was on the pill. That wasn’t quite right, but Losman struggled to accurately explain the sense to Pelin and Jens. He’d become so fascinated by the memories he was reliving that sometimes he felt as if he were still inside those memories even when he was awake. That his waking life was a memory.
He dwelled on his memories so much that he’d become obsessed with them. He now kept a detailed journal. Some men watch porn, they can’t help themselves, it invigorates them, but Losman had become addicted to reliving his newfound memories. Not a physical addiction but a psychological or emotional one. Which, he thought, was ironic given FuturePerfect’s mission to eradicate addiction.
Although he went through the motions of his waking life, his translation work, his days with Aksel, and his meetings with Marlene, what he longed for more than anything was his Friday nights at FP when he could take the pill and ride the crest of his memory wave all the way back to his childhood. Thinking about his journeys to his past self was a pleasant diversion from his work on this putrid novel, the way he was both present and absent as the images spooled through his brain, having an out-of-body experience while simultaneously watching himself on that old television program This is Your Life. Following the initial grogginess after a session, his entire body absolutely thrummed with a low-grade buzz for hours. It was like being a child on the night before Christmas. He was too excited to sleep.
In two days, he would do it again. Two days seemed like an eternity. Where on Memory Lane would he go this time? During the course of four weeks, he had never, not once, had any memories involving how or when he’d developed Tourette, but he’d also been reliving only memories of his earliest life—up to the age of three. Pelin had promised to adjust the dosage so that he might see more years, but she also stressed patience. “We have to go slowly, Losman,” she’d said. “We don’t want to accidentally skip over the triggering events.”
Losman was getting antsy. What he wanted, more than anything, was to revisit Mrs. Graham’s classroom on the day she humiliated him.
He returned to his desk and sat down, closing his eyes, inhaling, exhaling. He cleared his throat and jerked his head until he felt stable, ready to work. When his urge was sated, he ran his palm over the nape of his neck and cleared his throat again, preparing to dive back in. But when he opened his eyes, he spotted his literal translation of the femme fatale’s final remark and was thrust back into a state of unbearable misery: Come now, big boy.
Losman rubbed the kinks out of his neck. He lifted the book from its holder and flipped to the next page. He didn’t like to scoot ahead when he translated, preferring to feel exactly what a reader might page after page, wanting that element of surprise that delighted him with fiction, but this story was so telegraphed that he already knew what would happen next: the scene would end, and in the next there’d be a dead body. And that body would belong to Katrine Bredesen, the suspect who was nothing more than a beautiful red herring the protagonist could fuck and discard, not a flesh and blood woman but a device—the last in a long chain of them in this blowhard of a novel. Later, there’d be a eureka moment when Niels P’s split-personality was discovered to be the killer, so all this was just an artificial set up for the most ludicrous plot Losman had ever encountered. And he wondered, not for the first time, if Niels H. Petersen was a psychopath.
Just as he was about to return to his translation, the saw roared to life again. It was a grating sound, a heavy mechanical whirring. He waited for it to finish, took a deep breath, and settled his fingers on the keyboard.
Then came the hard thwack of a sledgehammer.
And the saw. And the sledgehammer again.
Jesus Christ, Losman thought. When he worked, he needed absolute quiet, and if this continued his day would be shot. He pulled on his pants and stomped up the two flights of stairs to Kramer’s old place. The saw was running again; Losman could hear its sharp metallic teeth grinding wood into chips. He rapped on the door and waited, and when it didn’t open, he knocked again. This time he banged with the heel of his hand and the saw died.
A moment later the door was flung open, and a young man stood before him. “Yeah?” he said. He was a freckled kid of around twenty, tall and gangly, with short ginger hair, the narrow, angular face of a scarecrow, and a prominent Adam’s apple that looked sharp enough to sever wire. He wore the customary blue overalls of Danish workmen everywhere, the kind with a million pockets.
“I’m trying to work,” Losman said. He cleared his throat but didn’t dare jerk his head, which was what he really needed to do. “Do you have to make so much noise? It’s only 9:30.”
The young man shrugged. “We’re working too,” he said.
“Is there any chance you can work quietly?”
“Who is it?” called out a gruff voice within the apartment.
The young man turned and shouted, “It’s one of the neighbors!”
Losman heard heavy footfalls, and the door opened wide. An older, balder version of the young man appeared. His face was creased with deep lines under his eyes and on his cheeks, and he had an imposing belly that strained at the buttons of his blue overalls, but it was surely Jakobsen himself.
“I’m trying to work,” Losman repeated. He kept his tone measured and polite. “Is there any way you guys can be quieter?”
“Quieter?” Jakobsen said, and chuckled. He gestured at the pigsty that was Kramer’s apartment. They’d removed the cabinets and sink and countertop from the kitchen, and these were now scattered across the living room, apparently awaiting demolition. A 2x4 balanced on a pair of sawhorses. “This isn’t exactly a quiet job. Look at this place.”
Losman heard the click-clack of footsteps ascending the stairwell behind him, but it wasn’t until he noticed the father and son’s faces—mouths open, eyes wide—that he turned to see Caroline dressed like a man. He did a double take and realized she wore a period costume from the 1920s: gray trousers, black blazer, double-breasted suit, brightly polished men’s shoes, even a fedora and a cane, which she tapped on the floor with each step. She’d painted her face with white makeup, and her eyes were limned with black eyeshadow. She looked like Charlie Chaplin without a mustache.
“Hej, Losman,” she said.
Losman, who was unable to speak, simply nodded.
Caroline stood beside him, bringing with her a dense, cloying fog of men’s aftershave. She said to the older man, “Have you heard anything about Kramer?”
It took a moment for Jakobsen to gain his wits and respond. “Kramer?” he said. “Who the hell’s Kramer?”
“The man who lived here,” she said. “The one who died.”
Jakobsen stared in fascination at Caroline as if she’d dropped her drawers, squatted, and pooped on his front lawn. “Look,” he said, “we were hired to clear this apartment. We don’t know anything about who lived here. I’m sorry, but we’ve got work to do. C’mon, Simon.”
Jakobsen started to close the door, but his son stopped it with his arm. “You want us to find out about this Kramer guy?” Simon said to Caroline. Judging by the wide stupid grin on his face, he was clearly smitten by this strange, sexually ambiguous woman before him, and Losman could hardly blame him.
“Could you?” Caroline said. “That’d be so sweet of you.”
“No problem!”
Losman stood mute and dumb, until Caroline touched his elbow. “Would you like a coffee, Losman?”
Losman, who had translated only three of his ten pages, didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” he said. “I’d love to.”
Once inside her apartment, Caroline waved Losman over to the couch—a futon the color of a ripe banana—while she went into the galley kitchen off the dining room to prepare the coffee. On her way, she veered into the hall to lean her cane next to her stable of shoes. The apartment was a clutter-free paean to minimalism, with the usual accoutrements Losman by now assumed were requirements in Danish apartments: bare wooden floors, tall windows that offered ample light, IKEA bookshelves filled with a wide assortment of Danish and English-language books. Losman jerked his head a few times, snorted, puffed air. He knew that if he examined her books closely, he would find Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy and Tom Kristensen’s Hærværk among them. Those books decorated the shelves of nearly every university-educated Dane of a certain age that he’d ever met.
Caroline returned bearing a teak tray with a French press, two mugs, a plate of oatmeal raisin cookies, and a small porcelain carafe of milk. She set the tray on the coffee table and sat beside Losman on the futon. He was used to her eccentricity, but he couldn’t determine whether this breed of eccentricity was authentic or the phony version of the poseur. Not that it really mattered to him. Either way, he was still attracted to her.
“You really made an impression on that kid,” he said. He couldn’t believe that he was sitting on Caroline’s couch, with Caroline so close that he could touch her knee. Sunlight slanted through the tall living room windows, giving the shadows a hard, linear edge. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. He cleared his throat. He balled and unballed his fist.
She kicked off her shiny men’s shoes and removed her black socks—revealing toenails painted in every color of the rainbow—and tucked her legs beneath her. “Did I?” she said.
“You sure did,” he said. How could she not have noticed the boy’s intense stare and dopey grin? he wondered. Or was she being falsely modest? “He wasn’t interested in me once you arrived.”
“Was he interested in you?” Caroline smiled, briefly flashing her small, uneven teeth, like a row of tiny pebbles in her mouth. “I’m sorry if I spoiled things for you, Losman.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I just hope he finds out more about Kramer,” she said. “He must’ve been buried by now. But it’d be nice to reach out to his family.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Then Losman cleared his throat and gestured at her outfit. “So, what’s the occasion?”
She glanced down at herself as if she’d forgotten her costume. “Oh, I wanted to know what it felt like to dress like a man.”
“Like Charlie Chaplin, you mean?”
“I didn’t intend to dress like Charlie Chaplin. But once I had the suit on, I realized I could. I already had the hat, cane, and makeup.”
Losman nodded as though that made perfect sense. “But why?” he asked.
Caroline leaned forward and pushed down the handle of the French press. She poured two cups of coffee and handed one to Losman. She snatched a cookie from the plate and offered one to Losman, but he declined, and she sat back. “Why dress like a man?” she said. “Like I said, I wanted to know what it felt like.” She snapped her teeth into the cookie and began to chew. “And I wondered if it would change me in some fundamental way. Haven’t you ever felt like wearing a dress or a skirt, and seeing what it’s like to be a woman?”
“Can’t say that I have, no.”
She swallowed. “You should try it sometime, Losman. You’ll feel different.”
“I’m sure,” Losman said. He sipped his coffee, and he remembered that he had a nearly full cup sitting in his own apartment, cold by now. “Did it work? Do you feel changed?”
Caroline shook her head, disappointed. “Not really. But maybe that’s because I’m wearing a bra and panties. A part of me is still feminized. I should remove them.”
Losman felt the heat rise to his face. She’d used the word for panties, trusser, not the more gender neutral underbukser; she’d also used the word feminiseret, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard that one spoken in conversation, but it made perfect sense in this strange context—much like Caroline and her odd behavior made perfect sense. Caroline might be kooky, but there was something very alluring about her and it unnerved Losman to be this close to her. The only other woman who’d ever used the words bh (bra) and trusser in his presence was Kat, but that had been a long time ago, back when they were still a happy couple. To him, these words were sexually charged, and it felt as though a dormant part of him had begun to stir.
His cell phone began to play a snippet of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” the ring tone he used for his few Swedish contacts.
“One second,” he said. He pulled the squawking device from his pocket and held it flat in his palm to read the name on the screen: Lars Andreasson. “Shit.”
“Who is it?” Caroline said, tilting her head in concern.
Losman let the call go to voicemail.
“Nobody important,” Losman said. He knew what Lars calling meant—that Niels H. must’ve returned from Corsica and gone to Lars demanding to see pages after Losman had ignored his emails. Exactly what Losman didn’t need, now or ever. “I’ll call him back later.”
Caroline lifted her mug to her lips and drank. She lowered the mug and held it against her chest, cupping it between her palms. Her ice-blue eyes remained locked on Losman, as if daring him to look at her; at any other moment they might hold him in a trance with the mystical power of a hypnotist, but with Petersen’s smug face now flashing like a Times Square billboard in his mind, he was unhypnotizable.
“How’s the memory study going?” she asked.
Losman balled his hand and squeezed it tightly, forcing himself back to this conversation, thrusting Niels H. out of mind the best he could. How could he explain what he’d experienced on BhMe4 so that she’d believe him? Should he tell her about his Tourette? Could he? His mouth was like a cotton ball, so he sipped his coffee, hoping to quench his thirst. But it only made him jittery, even a little sick to his stomach, and he set his cup down. He felt a strange sensation in his chest, like a dozen centipedes skittering under his skin, and now it spread to his belly and groin.
His phone pinged. A voicemail from Lars.
“It’s going great,” he said, distracted. The director of a major Danish publisher had just left a message on his phone, a message that could set in motion a series of events that could eventually ruin his translation career, turning him into a pauper, and he didn’t know what to do. He proceeded to ramble on about FuturePerfect Laboratories, Building 8, the yellow pill, the sensors and beeping machines, and of course his babyhood memories.
“Wait. Are you saying you actually see memories from when you were a baby?”
“Yeah. It sounds crazy impossible, I know, but I really do.”
“You sure you aren’t just dreaming?”
“That’s crossed my mind a million times, believe me. But these memories are so specific, and so lucid. It’s like I’m right there, alive in them. I can smell my mom’s perfume. Taste her milk. I’ve never had dreams like these before. I’m literally seeing, hearing, and touching things as my babyself.”
Caroline’s eyes were wide with wonder. She removed her fedora, balanced it on her knee, and ran her fingertip along the brim, as if admiring the gritty texture of the fabric. Her hair today was a dark blue fanned with pink streaks like flamingo wings, a jarring contrast to the Charlie Chaplin costume and the caked-on makeup and eyeshadow. “That sounds incredible. Do they need more people for the study?”
“I’ll ask for you,” Losman said. He liked the idea of Caroline doing memory therapy with him. It would give them more reason to talk.
“Imagine what it could do for my art? Seeing old memories like that.”
He smiled. “You’re dedicated.”
“I think about my art all the time.” She jerked her thumb toward the wall behind her. “When I’m in my studio I’m free to live a rich and authentic life, and I love it. Is that how you feel when you translate?”
Losman shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Translation is just my job. I’d rather be writing my own stories. Then it would feel rich and authentic.”
“Do you write fiction?”
“I used to.”
“Why don’t you now if that’s what you want to do?”
“I need to pay bills,” he said.
“Can’t you do both your job and your art? I do.”
He cringed. The answer was yes, he supposed he could do both. But the truth was, his translation work always consumed the bulk of his creative energy and time. First there was the translation itself, which was definitely not easy, then came the second and third and fourth round of his own edits to make the pages respectable and fluid, as smooth and clear as glass. Finally he would submit the book to his editor and begin the next project. Within a few weeks, he’d get the manuscript with the editor’s edits and discover that his manuscript was not nearly as smooth as he’d thought, and he’d go through the entire document one edit at a time, cleaning and polishing. Throughout this entire translation and editorial process, he’d have to hustle to find the next book, the next paycheck. Writing fiction was a luxury he couldn’t really afford—especially if he lost the Petersen translation.
Caroline said, “The other day I was at Thiemers Magasin, the bookstore over on Tullinsgade, and I found one of your translations in the English-language section.”
“You did?”
“Well, I didn’t. A staff member found it for me. I had to ask her to search your name since I didn’t know which books you’ve translated.”
“You looked me up?”
“Yes, I was curious. You’ve done a lot of books! That’s impressive, Losman. But why don’t you write your own now? Why wouldn’t you make time every day to do what you love to do?”
One flight above, in Kramer’s apartment, the saw whirred to life and Losman could feel its vibration in his legs. He welcomed the interruption.
Caroline stood. “Come,” she said. “I want to show you my studio.”
She trundled down the short hall, beckoning him with her finger. Losman, obeying, followed her into a compact bedroom teeming with paint brushes in old coffee containers, tubes of paint, easels, stacks of canvases leaning against the wall, paint-spattered strips of plastic sheeting, artwork. The curtains were drawn back, and a beautiful orange light filtered into the room, making Caroline’s creations seem vivid and alive. The window was open, and the circulating air was gentle and warm. In the center of the room was a large drafting table, on which were a series of charcoal sketches that Losman registered but did not examine. Easels were stationed throughout the room, holding watercolors in various stages of completion, and Losman wandered among them. The paintings had a surprisingly cheerful color palette for lugubrious Caroline, pinks and purples and yellows and reds, calling to his mind Claude Monet and the French Impressionists. Because upon closer inspection, he realized that each represented the apartment building across the street at different hours of the day. The paintings were impressive, he thought, even in a half-formed state. In fact, they were every bit as good as the paintings in her Christiana exhibition.
Losman turned to find Caroline standing before an old-fashioned oak bureau that he must’ve walked past without noticing, the kind with a broad oval mirror attached to it. “You’re a terrific artist,” he told her, and instantly regretted his choice of words. He sounded like a proud father, not a potential lover.
“Thank you,” she said to him via the reflection in the glass. “It’s how I process my experiences, how I make meaning out of my life. By drawing them on paper.”
He was struck by how incredibly humble Caroline was, even self-effacing. How could she not see how talented she was?
Casting around for something to talk about, he noticed the sketches on the drafting table, really noticed them. He leaned forward and examined the compositions. The first row was a series of black-and-white panels portraying a lonely man seated on a stairwell. The drawings were incomplete, and yet they captured a great deal of raw emotion. Caroline had used the charcoal to outline only the most rudimentary human figure, allowing the white space to represent the man’s inner life, which was as bare as the blank page. In simple strokes with an occasional flourish, Losman could see the deep pool of sadness in the man’s eyes. The loneliness. The isolation. In one of the panels, he sat slouched against the wall, the picture of abject misery; in another he’d buried his face in his hands, like a father mourning the loss of a child. With a gasp, Losman realized who the man was: Kramer.
He was stunned. Caroline had found a way to imbue Kramer’s final night on earth with dignity and humanity and compassion, in spite of the fact that he’d done something hideous. No one who viewed these sketches would ever suspect that this sad old man had drunkenly fallen asleep on the stairwell, pissed his pants, and masturbated in front of Caroline. It was a testament to her ability to empathize with others that she could view him this way, and it made Losman feel very tender toward her. How could she be so forgiving of someone so contemptuous? The truth was, he realized, he didn’t know much about her, and this suddenly bothered him. Where was she from? What was her story? How did she become the person that she was?
He easily recognized the second row of panels. They depicted the following day, when the two of them had sat together on the stairwell and Losman had tried to comfort her. He was struck by the evident care she’d taken to sketch him—and that she’d done so at all. One of the sketches showed the two of them holding hands. In her rendering, the conjoined hands seemed to belong to one person; there was no way to distinguish when her body ended and his began. He studied the panel carefully. Was there meaning to be found in those inseparable hands?
“You’re so incredible,” Losman said. He stared at the hands. Those hands. Conjoined hands. Yes, he decided, there was meaning in them. He turned to Caroline. Trembling nervously, he blurted, “Do you want to go out some time? Get dinner maybe?”